October 2025
Our 2024-25 Annual Review has now been released, detailing the activities and impact of the network.
Read MoreSeptember 2025
Briefing: Following the UK government’s proposal to mainstream gender equality across FCDO as a response to aid cuts announced in early 2025, this paper details suggestions on how to make this as effective as possible. Stressing that the new approach must retain standalone initiatives alongside transformative gender equality objectives across the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, we also include specific policy recommendations to support its implementation.
Read MoreAugust 2025
Briefing: This briefing responds to the UK International Development Minister’s intention to mainstream gender throughout the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) following cuts to the aid budget earlier this year. Reflecting on lessons learned from decades of efforts to gender mainstream, we outline a set of core building blocks for success and stress that protecting standalone gender programming is essential for effective mainstreaming.
Read MoreJune 2025
Response: The 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit concluded with a set of statements covering limited and narrow subjects in the absence of a Leaders’ Communiqué. These statements signal a significant regression from previous years’ outputs, with only superficial reference to women and girls scattered across the texts.
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June 2025
GADN Members’ Meeting: This GADN members’ meeting on Feminist Solidarity in a Time of Aid Cuts and Backlash: Reflecting, Resisting, Reimagining brought together a panel of speakers to reflect on the current challenging context that our sector is facing, from cuts to US AID and UK ODA to the escalating attacks on women and girls’ rights. The panel was chaired by Piyumi Samaraweera and we heard interventions from Dorothy Sang of Care International UK, Alex Farley of Bond and feminist activist, writer and development consultant Esua Jane Goldsmith.
Read MoreMay 2025
Response: GADN responds to Baroness Chapman’s remarks made at the IDC on 13 May 2025, suggesting that gender equality spend is one of the areas most at risk in the cuts to ODA announced earlier this year. With 11 June 2025 being a key decision point for the future of UK aid spend, GADN calls on the Foreign Secretary to protect gender equality spending.
Read MoreMarch 2025
Letter: Prime Minister Starmer has announced substantial cuts in UK aid. GADN and members call for a reversal of the decision and urge Foreign Secretary Lammy to prioritise gender equality within diminished aid budgets while championing the rights of women and girls on the international stage.
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February 2025
GADN Members’ Meeting: This GADN members’ meeting, titled ‘Reflecting on 30 Years Since Beijing: Preparing for CSW69’ convened speakers representing women’s rights organisations from the UK and beyond as well as UN Women to discuss the upcoming CSW, sharing priorities and reflections with the Beijing Platform for Action in mind. The panel was chaired by Yamina Ouldali and speakers included Brianna Howell and Loui Williams of UN Women, Nicole Maloba of FEMNET, Heather Knight of Plan International UK and Shiphrah Belonguel of Fòs Feminista.
Read MoreDecember 2024
Briefing: Targeting the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), this briefing explores recommendations for more gender-responsive humanitarian engagement, covering suggestions around leadership and approaches, funding modalities as well as civil society partnerships and engagement.
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October 2024
GADN Members’ Meeting: This GADN members’ meeting on Feminist and Decolonial Ways of Working provided a space to look at some of the established and emerging practices and discuss experiences and insights by hearing from a range of different speakers, and exchanging with other GADN members. A hybrid panel discussion was moderated by Leila Billing, and we heard from Dr Ramatu Bangura, Pranita Choudhry, and Arundhati Sridhar.
Read MoreAugust 2024
Statement: GADN Board and staff stand in solidarity with anti-racism activists and movements as part of our own ongoing commitments towards anti-racism work.
Read MoreJuly 2024
Our 2023-24 Annual Review has now been released, detailing the activities and impact of the network.
Read MoreJuly 2024
Learning paper: This learning paper explores the concept of ‘global feminist cooperation’ and some of the inherent conflicts within it, before looking at what conflict transformation approaches can offer in these spaces. It sets out GADN’s learnings in this area and concludes with a reflective exercise for readers.
Read MoreJune 2024
Briefing: This briefing examines how states that have feminist foreign policies (FFPs) or whose foreign policies are inspired by feminist ambitions can meaningfully apply feminist approaches to humanitarian action, which is a sub-sector of foreign policy that has received comparatively little attention in FFP debates thus far.
Read MoreJune 2024
Response: The 2024 G7 Leaders’ Communique included some positive language on gender equality but presents a regression from last year’s text, especially concerning sexual and reproductive health and rights - particularly the omission of reference to safe and legal abortions.
Read MoreMay 2024
GADN Members’ Meeting: This GADN Members' Meeting on feminist, anti-racist and decolonial perspectives on Palestine provided an educational space for GADN members to engage with these issues through the perspectives and analyses of anti-Zionist feminist speakers of Palestinian and Jewish descent. The virtual panel was moderated by Awino Okech, with speakers Nada Elia and Walaa Alqaisiya.
Read MoreFebruary 2024
GADN Members’ Meeting: This GADN Members’ Meeting provided an opportunity to explore what locally-led development and decolonisation mean in practice with speakers Dr. Kamna Patel and Dr. Lata Narayanaswamy. We examined why locally-led development is gaining traction politically and discussed why decolonial approaches are still needed in the international development sector.
Read MoreDecember 2023
Briefing: This briefing argues that publicly funded and managed public services and social protection are central to achieving gender equality and women’s rights. It underscores that publicly financed services are more cost-effective, sustainable and equitable despite the growing privatisation trend. It concludes with recommendations from Southern groups for increasing fiscal space.
Read MoreDecember 2023
Learning paper: This learning paper collates lessons learned and reflections from GADN’s G7 engagement in advocating for the adoption of feminist alternatives in 2022 and 2023. It suggests further thoughts and recommendations for improving feminist cooperation within Women 7 (W7) across issues such as timeframes; advocacy; feminist representation and movement building.
Read MoreNovember 2023
Response: The newly launched White Paper on International Development guides the UK’s approach to the new global realities we face. GADN welcomes the White Paper’s important political prioritisation of gender equality and the rights of women and girls, along with the ambition to strengthen and reform the international system. However, concerns remain about the substance of these commitments and their operationalisation.
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